Northampton

The Borough of Northampton created a small park along Canal Street, where the old Lehigh Canal towpath is paved and makes a fine walking trail. You’ll also find ballfields, picnic pavilions and restrooms. This is also the point where the D&L Trail switches from towpath to rail-trail and winds along the western side of the Lehigh River. Head north and you’ll hit Slatington, Lehigh Gap and Lehighton. To the south you’ll eventually encounter Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.  In geological lingo, it’s known as the Jacksonburg formation and consists of a combination of chalk, clay, shale and limestone. This rock is unique to the Lehigh Valley and is found in a long belt between sedimentary deposits of limestone & shale. 
 
To the folks in Northampton in the late 1800s, it was simply called “cement rock” because it possessed all the necessary ingredients needed to manufacture Portland cement. By using such local ingredients, these hardworking folks were filling 75 percent of the global cement needs by 1900, making Northampton-like its neighbor Coplay-a big reason the Lehigh Valley was the greatest cement-producing region in the world.
 
Of all the related industries operating in the “Cement Belt,” the most noteworthy was probably the Atlas Cement Plant. Founded in 1895, Atlas provided all the cement used to build the Panama Canal from 1908-14. The cement was bagged in the Laubach Avenue building that’s now the Northampton Area Community Center.

Things to see and do in Northampton